McDonald’s, showing a rather odd mastery of the art of public relations, has fired the South Carolina single mother who was sent to jail because she let her daughter play in a nearby park while she worked at the fast-food restaurant.

Debra Harrell is out of jail now, and people have rallied around her in the wake of her arrest for dropping her 9-year-old at the park.

While many have rightfully argued that Harrell’s decision to allow her daughter to play outside was not negligent, the other reality is that Harrell’s other options were very likely limited at the time she made that call. As Covert points out, the average wage at McDonald’s is under $8 an hour, and cost for a week of day camp runs around $300.

At the same time, state assistance for families who need child-care has declined by more than 30 percent in South Carolina, mirroring a national trend that leaves fewer children with reliable care.

It’s heartening news that Harrell is out of jail and back with her daughter, but nothing has changed about her fundamental predicament. She continues to face the same problems she was facing before — only now without a job.

A crowdfunding site has raised more than $27,000 to help her out, which will go a long way to help her while she figures out her next step. Similar to the outpouring of support for Harrell, people in Arizona and across the country put together a fund of more than $100,000 for Shanesha Taylor, a mother who was arrested and charged with felony child abuse after leaving her children in a car for 45 minutes while she went on a job interview.

(Taylor is now out of jail and has struck a plea bargain in her case, but she has not yet been reunited with her children and is being forced to take state-mandated parenting classes as a requirement of the deal.)

About the blogger

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the ’90s, ran MPR’s political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories.

Related Blog Posts

Shocking. They have one of the worst records when it comes to actually dealing with people they have ticked off. They refuse to engage in any social space, do not reply to emails, and their solution to everything seems to be to give you a free Big Mac. Not going to work in this situation, so why bother responding at all, right?

rapete15

and people tick THEMSELVES off. Typically due to their twisted notion of how things SHOULD be, not how they certainly and actually ARE>>

BJ

“McDonald’s isn’t commenting.”

Should they? Is it a franchise or corporate store? Did she return to work and fired for something else? How long had she worked for this location?

X.A. Smith

Hopefully the media exposure gets her a job at a company that doesn’t exploit her like that.